16.5.11

Somewhere in Punjab....

Five BJP ministers and two chief parliamentary secretaries of the party resigned on Thursday taking the moral high ground against corruption. In the process, they precipitated a crisis within the SAD-BJP alliance government eight months short of completing its term. The resignations follow CBI filing a case against BJP MLA Raj Khurana and arresting him along with an alleged conduit on Friday last in a bribery case. The investigators also questioned two ministers, Manoranjan Kalia and Swarna Ram. Swarna’s personal assistant Bhag Singh is also under arrest. Punjab in charge of BJP Shanta Kumar, who met partymen at Punjab Bhawan on Thursday, later handed over the resignations to Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal. The government is yet to react to the development. “The party high command had given us a one-point agenda: take the resignations of our ministers and CPS. That done, we’ve nothing else to say,” said former HP CM Shanta Kumar. The embarrassing incident in Jammu — where seven MLAs including a senior RSS man and former minister of state for defence Chaman Lal Gupta cross voted in a MLC election — may have provoked the party into taking this step to thwart growing indiscipline in state units.

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